Sitecore vs. Magento: A Detailed Website Platform Comparison

When it comes to website development platforms and content management systems, there are a lot of options currently available on the market. Depending on your brand’s industry, the type of products you sell, the services you offer, or even the general size of your business, certain platforms may be better suited for your needs and for achieving your business objectives.

Sitecore and Magento are two very different platforms that are used by many businesses in many different verticals on aglobal scale. Both are considered the gold standards amongst their respective competitors. While comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges—their feature sets are incredibly different—they do have some shared similarities.

Sitecore is undoubtedly the leader in website and marketing automation, but when it comes to ecommerce, Magento takes the cake. Above all, both of these platforms are powerful tools, empowering companies to have more control of their websites than ever before. However to utilize them efficiently, it’s important to find a knowledgeable partner that has experience working with these systems. To help you better understand the basics of each platform, and to identify which solution will be most aligned with your business goals, let’s explore some of the benefits of Sitecore and Magento:

Sitecore

Sitecore is a global leader in customer experience management, providing a state-of-the-art content management system (CMS) that optimizes the user-experience for each visitor to your site. The product allows organizations to control and own the content that is delivered to prospects through a highly integrated system, offering exquisite scalability options that can fulfil the needs of all organizations. Sitecore is an enterprise product that features all elements found in a traditional CMS platform, plus an array of innovative tools that create a unique experience.

Automated Marketing
Sitecore offers marketing automation that is far more advanced than any other content management system. With Sitecore’s automation marketing suite, you can integrate other marketing channels into your CMS so that you can serve your users with content that is relevant to their needs. You’re able to optimize content for specific individuals based on their interests and behavior, in order to provide a customized experience for each and every visitor to your site. By serving your users with content that they find most valuable, conversions and business growth will increase as well.

Built in Analytics User Data
The built-in analytics program for Sitecore is incredibly powerful and provides businesses with a lot of the key insights they need to know about their audience. High-quality data is automatically stored so that you can analyze it when you’d like and determine the best tactics and strategies to help move your brand forward. You don’t have to set up any sort of tracking in order to enable the Sitecore analytics suite either – it will automatically be activated.

You can examine all aspects of each campaign or marketing initiative in one place, and use the built-in testing tools to determine what’s performing best and which initiatives are garnering the best results.

Highly Scalable and Configurable
Sitecore has extensive scalability options and endless customizable configurations available. You can truly make your website exactly how you need it to be in order to achieve your goals and reach your users. The tools within the system are all focused on generating engagement, and each one can be adapted to meet the unique needs of every business. You can choose functionalities that you are most familiar with, define utilities that you want to include, and select elements that you want to exclude. Each and every aspect of the site can be tailored to fit your needs.

Security
Since Sitecore is most commonly used by enterprise companies, the platform really reflects the much needed security measures that businesses of that size require in order to keep all their data safe. The security features of Sitecore are arguably one of the biggest reasons the platform is so helpful for businesses of all sizes. The privacy and security that the Sitecore CMS provides not only ensures that you have an incredibly secure site, but it also helps to instill trust from users in your brand.

Mobile Ready

Today, reaching users through their mobile devices is becoming just as important for influencing consumer behavior as connecting with them while they’re sitting at a desktop. To reflect this large population of users, Sitecore delivers a completely mobile-optimized system for your company, which in turn provides the assurance that users can access your site from any device they choose, without sacrificing usability.

Magento

Magento is an open-source ecommerce platform, making it an excellent fit for businesses of all sizes that are selling their products online. The program has options that can accommodate all budgets, while still being flexible enough with features and functionalities that work well for large enterprise companies, where cost isn’t as much of a concern as it may be for some smaller businesses. Because of the core fundamentals of this type of solution, nearly every business can use Magento to help accomplish their brand’s objectives when it comes to ecommerce.

Payment and Shipping
Within the ecommerce space, the importance of payment and shipping is unquestionable. For the most part, your entire business can only operate when those two crucial functions are managed correctly. Every business has preferences and requirements with how they operate, and Magento allows brands to work with a wide variety of payment services and shipping vendors to make sure they have a solution that is tailored to their needs.

Highly Advanced Ecommerce

Of all the platforms available on the market currently, Magento undoubtedly is the most advanced solution for ecommerce. The program offers features that you won’t find in any of its competitors, and has functionalities that make it easier for businesses to improve their online presence. The built-in aspects of Magento include features such as flexible coupons, promotional and tiered pricing, product bundling, and more. With most other platforms, you wouldn’t find these intricate and varied options available.

Many Extensions Available
Aside from what the program comes with “out of the box,” there are plenty of additional add-ons that can make for an even better user-experience. You can make the platform have everything you want it to, and craft a site that can do all that you need. There may be certain design elements or functionality add-ons that would be necessary given the industry your brand operates in, and with Magento you can always integrate new tools into the setup of your software.

Large Community for Support and Development

Quite possibly one of the biggest benefits of Magento is that there is an immense community for support and development at your disposal. According to data provided by Mainstreet Host, over 240,000 businesses use Magento for their ecommerce businesses, and approximately 800,000 developers are skilled in the platform globally. This number is still growing, making it easier for businesses to connect with others that are familiar with the system, enabling more and more opportunities as you become more knowledgeable with it.

Flexibility
Magento has plenty of scalability possibilities throughout the platform so that businesses can facilitate the specific user experience that they want their customers and potential customers to have. You can control the way that your site is managed so that you’re selecting a method that works most effectively for your brand. The flexibility with the program also allows room for business growth in the future. As your business changes, you can easily make the necessary alterations to your site to reflect that.

Mobile and SEO friendly
The platform uses a responsive design to ensure that your website is easily accessible from any device that your users access your website from. Whether it’s an iPhone or a tablet, the way you intended your website to appear for your customers is exactly how it will look. Websites that don’t use this type of design, or don’t create a mobile-optimized version, often miss out on potential sales because they aren’t providing a positive user-experience and the overall usability on the site is too difficult to navigate. Aside from ensuring your users are top priority, Magento is SEO-friendly too, keeping in mind how search engines read websites throughout the entire foundation of the design.

Sitecore vs. Magento: Understanding the Basics

Sitecore and Magento are truly the gold standards in their respective markets. Both platforms are highly scalable and customizable, have room for a number of available integrations, and are optimized for mobile and search engines. Both are great options for content management systems with different specialty areas, and selecting which one is right for your brand comes down to the core needs and objectives of your business. Ultimately, with both systems it’s crucial that you find a knowledgeable partner that is experienced with this type of website development to help you set up your CMS and maintain it for your business as your needs change.

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About the Author

Ryan Plaisted

Ryan is a project manager at Blue Fountain Media. He has been designing, planning, overseeing, and implementing a wide range of digital marketing projects for over a decade. His current likes include indie board games and bad movies, and as a recent transplant from Boston, he really appreciates the fast subways and streets organized on a grid in NYC.